Omoyele Sowore, the 2023 presidential candidate of the African Action Congress (AAC), has taken legal action against the Department of State Services (DSS) and social media companies Meta (Facebook) and X.
His legal team announced on Tuesday that the suits were filed at the Federal High Court in Abuja.
According to his lawyers, the case is to challenge what they called unconstitutional censorship of Sowore’s accounts on Meta and X.
Lead counsel Tope Temokun said the lawsuit is about protecting free speech in Nigeria, warning that if state agencies can dictate to global platforms, then no Nigerian is safe; anyone’s voice could be silenced at any time.
Lawyers warn against gagging Nigerians online
The legal team stressed that censorship of political criticism is against democracy. They cited Section 39 of the Nigerian Constitution, which guarantees freedom of expression without interference.
“No security agency, no matter how powerful, can suspend or delete those rights,” the lawyers stated.
They also accused Meta and X of complicity, saying that by bowing to illegal censorship demands, the platforms risk aiding repression in Nigeria.
Calls for resistance against ‘digital dictatorship’
Sowore’s lawyers are asking the court to declare that the DSS has no legal power to censor Nigerians on social media, and that Meta and X must not serve as tools of repression.
They further argued that Sowore’s rights — and by extension, those of all Nigerians — must be protected from unlawful censorship.
“This struggle is not about personalities, it is about principle,” the statement read, urging Nigerians, journalists, and human rights defenders to resist attempts to turn Nigeria into a “digital dictatorship.”
DSS counters with charges against Sowore
Meanwhile, the DSS has also filed a five-count charge against Sowore at the same Federal High Court in Abuja.
The charges were filed by the Director of Public Prosecutions at the Federal Ministry of Justice, Muhammed Abubakar, alongside other DSS lawyers.
The secret police had earlier given Sowore a one-week ultimatum, demanding that he delete what they described as a “false and inciting” post about President Bola Tinubu. The ultimatum, which expired on Monday, was ignored.
However, both X and Meta also refused DSS’s request to delete Sowore’s accounts from their platforms.
